Product manufacturers typically have information about the products that they manufacture in the form of product specification data. For example, a manufacturer of consumer electronic devices, such as DVD players, will have product specifications for each different model of DVD player that the manufacturer produces. These specifications may include model name, dimensions, and other features of the product, such as whether it is portable, what media formats it supports, what types of outputs it provides, etc.
Manufacturers often publish their product specification data, for example, in product catalogues and, increasingly today, via the World Wide Web (the “Web”). End-user customers, as well as merchants that resell manufacturers' products, will often use the product specification data to make purchasing decisions and to compare the features of one manufacturer's products against those of another manufacturer. One problem that hinders the ability of a consumer or merchant to compare products from different manufacturers is that different manufacturers of products in a given product class do not always use the same set of specifications for that class of products. For example, one manufacturer may specify the height, width, and depth of its products in that class, whereas another manufacturer may only specify the volume (e.g., cubic centimeters) of its products. Different manufacturers also may not agree on what features of a product are important to consumers and merchants, and thus some manufacturers will provide specifications on certain features and others may not.
Uniform specifications for products in a given product class is not the only problem that manufacturers face. They also often have a problem maintaining an up-to-date database of their product information. Many manufacturers have multiple divisions creating different product lines, have separate marketing organizations that often maintain catalog information in unstructured fashions, and typically have not had a strong need for a centralized database of their product information. As such, manufacturers often do not have an organizational infrastructure that is optimized around creating a central product database of the products they manufacture.
Because most manufacturers lack the necessary infrastructure to create and maintain a centralized database of product specifications for the products they manufacture, and because it is becoming increasingly important, particularly with the advent of online shopping via the Internet, that manufacturers provide uniform specifications for products in a given product class, there is a need for systems and methods that enable and encourage manufacturers to describe the features and other specifications of their products in a consistent and uniform manner and to maintain that data in a centralized database. The present invention addresses this need.